


would you hold my soul (and whisper close)

by plinys



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 08:29:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11619795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: She’s born with words along her arm.





	would you hold my soul (and whisper close)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AllisonSwan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllisonSwan/gifts).



> for time canary week, day 4, free day

She’s born with words along her arm. 

Black against her pale skin, in a handwriting fine, and a language unspoken. She used to trace the words as a girl, the  _ characters _ , until she understood what language it was. Used to imagine what it would be like to meet her soulmate.

She’d come up with fantasies, during her childhood.

Elaborate stories, while drunk in college.

A vague hint of disbelief in the whole concept, before she kissed a man she shouldn’t have.

None of them had been close to the truth. To floating there in the middle of the ocean, ready to die, believing that this was the end for the hundredth time over this past year, and somehow it suddenly  _ not  _ being the end. 

For a woman, with dark hair and worried eyes, and words in a language she didn’t understand, except for one sentence she’d been carrying with her for years.

Translated it a simple statement:  _ You’re safe now _ . 

Somewhere in her half blurry haze, in the fog of her mind, in her shipwrecked state, all she can manage to say is, “Oh, finally.” 

She’ll trace those words on Nyssa’s skin later, apologizing for not thinking it through, for blurting out the first thing that came to her mind, for leaving such vague uncertain words on her skin. 

A laugh will meet her there in the dead of night, an assurance that it was alright, that these were the perfect words. 

“You made me believe someone would want me.”

And in that moment she’d believed it.

Believed despite everything else going wrong that this was where she had always been meant to be.

That this was her happily ever after.

But it does not last.

It burns under her skin.

And those words will fade from her skin, stolen from her just as her life is stolen from her. A arrow deep in her chest, bleeding out, miles from a woman she once loved. 

She dies.

She dies.

She dies.

And then she lives.

It's a flurry of sensations and emotions and nothing stable.

Nothing to cling onto, a fog that stretches endlessly, suffocating her mind and blocking out all other sensations so that she’s not even human anymore. 

Until she is.

Until her soul is pulled back from the other side.

It takes her months before she remembers to check for her soulmate.

Nyssa’s words are still there on her arm but faded, and when they stand together in her prison cell before leaving this time, she finds the matching words faded as well. 

Instead, she has new words.

A sentence written like a loop around her left ankle. Words she must have heard during the fog, words that she can’t tie down to any one person, but she’ll watch as they flicker between their solid black and the grey of the dead, as the Legends travel through time.

A soulmate left behind while she goes to explore all of space and time.

Perhaps they are lucky that way. 

Lucky to have lived a normal life while Sara could not.

_ Lived _ .

Because when they end up back in their own time, the words are faded and gone, and the ache in her heart over losing her sister is easier to focus on than the ache of losing a soulmate she never met.

Though sometimes she’ll wonder if perhaps… 

Platonic soulmates were not underheard of.

She aches with an unfulfilled pain. 

Rubs her fingers against her ankle to see the grey words there against her skin.

Until it happens again.

Until there’s a hand around her throat, the hand of a man she might almost love, who looks down at her like he is nothing to her. 

She dies.

She dies.

She dies. 

And then she lives. Again.

Not a miracle this time.

Not magic, but science. 

She says, “Don’t,” one word. 

Telling Jax not to shoot, and Rip not to leave.

And she doesn’t think about it.

Doesn’t recall how nearly a year ago, the team had gotten drunk o n bottles of vintage wine and compared their words, Rip rubbing his fingers against the one word on the inside of his wrist, the one that he’s carried with him for all of these years. 

She’ll find words there on her own skin later, not the first thing she heard him say since coming back to life  - words directed at Jax, there in the morning air, by a man who didn’t remember how to love her - but words directed towards her ,  towards them.

Words that he’ll wrinkle his nose at later when he’s back to himself.

When they’re laying side by side in a bed, pressed close enough together that he can run his fingers along her skin in a private moment meant just for them. 

His voice light and almost a laugh, because  _ of course _ , these would be the words that bound them together, “The British are coming.” 

  
  
  
  



End file.
